


Caught In Time

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [24]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Cybertron, Desperation, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Drug Use, Epic Battles, Execution, Fear of Death, Gunshot Wounds, Heart Attacks, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, Invasion of Privacy, Major Character Injury, Medical Trauma, Multi, OT6, Pace Mates, Pack Feels, Prophetic Dreams, Reapers, Sieges, Stabbing, Stalking, Temporary Character Death, Trench Warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cliffjumper is being troubled by strange dreams...nightmares, if he's really honest. All of them end with someone's death in some horrible fashion, but do they really have a meaning?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught In Time

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron, or the residents themselves

Gears stares up at him, stunned. His optics are very wide and still getting wider, their color brightening to a whitish hue instead of their natural blue.

The vibroblade piercing his chest armor shivers, humming every time his vents contract. Cliffjumper notices the symbols on the blade’s handle—some variation of Cybertronian he’s unable to translate. It’s easier to look at that than really face the reality of what is happening before his optics right now. He should be getting help right now, he should be _helping_ right now, but he can’t move an inch.

 **::Primine,::** Gears whispers. It’s then that Cliff realizes that Gears doesn’t quite look like himself, but somehow it’s still him. He’s wearing what looks like a synthetically-woven ceremonial tunic over his armor—but even his armor is different! It’s thinner and painted in paler colors which are background to ancient Culumexian runes.

Cliffjumper stares at them, recognizing them from somewhere but unable to focus on remembering. They’re on Cybertron at night, the light from multiple fires confusing him into thinking it could be daytime. He can hear screaming and the hum of vibroblades much like the one in front of him from somewhere nearby.

Suddenly but somehow fluidly, Gears goes to his knees and then onto his side, curling into himself around the blade.

“Cliff,” he croaks out, staring at him for a long, tense moment before he unwinds, the last trace of blue in his optics fading into gray just moments before the rest of his frame follows suit.

Gears is dead.

—

Cliffjumper bolted upright, vents heaving with harsh, raspy gasps. As his systems continued their unexpected reboot, he cast a glance over his shoulder. The berth there was occupied, the tarps shifting slightly in the dark. Gears was alive.

_What was that?!_

The dream had been strangely free of the static Cybertronian nightmares usually had; it made the horror all the more vivid and _real._ Cybertron, the ringing of blades striking armor, the fire—Gears had even spoken in Culumexian. They rarely ever did that now; the humans and the larger frames found it rude since they couldn’t understand.

 **::Primine,::** he muttered softly. It was an archaic word, loosely translated to ‘divine Prime’ but meaning Primus.

Cliffjumper checked his internal chronometer and bit back a groan. 2:39 in the morning. Mentally cursing, he flopped down and covered his helm with his thermal tarp. After a while he powered down again and didn’t dream. But even when he woke at his proper time with the others and threw himself into his morning routine, he couldn’t forget.

“Stop cutting in front of me!” Gears cried. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

“No reason,” Cliffjumper snapped. “I just don’t want the Twins to get the best energon.”

“Like I do?” Gears threw up his hands, dodging Cliff’s maneuvers to keep in front of him and striding down the hall toward the rec room.

Cliffjumper watched him go with a stirring of despair in his spark, waiting for a vibroblade to come flying out of one of the rooms Gears was passing.

 _Just a dream_ , he told himself hastily. _It’s just a dream_.

—

The bots wait, huddling deep in their trenches so they’ll look even smaller than they are.

The trench smells like ash and melted metal, tickling Cliffjumper’s olfactory sensors, and he can do nothing about it. At least the retro-rats are still hiding; Cliffjumper hates it when the creatures startle him by crawling over his weapons or nipping at his heelstruts.

Gears grins at him, fingers adjusting the armlet on his left bicep. The Culumexian symbols on the cloth, distantly familiar, seem to glow in the shadows.

Cliff nods back, raises the miniature braam to his lips and blows the signal. Almost immediately the other Culumexians let loose their artillery, scrambling up the platforms and spilling out into the Dead End of Polyhex. The landmines hurt the audials, but it’s nothing compared to the repetitive reverb of their heavy blaster rifles.

Cliffjumper leads his mechs forward, pausing and throwing himself down to make a lower target while he’s cutting through debris. While he’s doing this, trying to work with a crude pair of shears, Gears falls.

One nanoklik he’s there beside Cliff and the next he’s on his back, brilliant blue stitches of acid-pellet fire across his chest. Abandoning the shears, Cliff moves to his side, clutching at his arm. If he could, he would cover the wound, but already Gears’ chest is starting to dissolve. There’s nothing to press down on.

“Captain,” Gears gasps out. Pale blue optics latch onto deeper blue just before the former fades out.

Gears is dead.

—

Cliffjumper’s optics snapped open.

“ _Slag_.”

For a long series of minutes he simply lay there, steadying his vents while letting the rest of his body shake itself out. What in the Pits…?

The night in the Ark was quiet, aside from the sounds of recharge from the other Minibots—there were no blasters firing, no explosions, no braam blasts.

Impulsively Cliff checked his chronometer. 2:39 again. Primus tricurse it. Somehow he knew that this time he wouldn’t be able to power down again.

“You need recharge,” Bumblebee insisted later on, blocking the doors to the training room. “You look terrible.”

“I always do!” Cliffjumper snarled. “People get in my way, I look terrible. And then _they_ look terrible.”

The threat barely had a veil, so Bumblebee gave in, sidling away and letting Cliff enter. One of the only other bots in the room was—by what would be coincidence to anyone else but was actually planning on Cliffjumper’s part—Gears. He had obviously finished his training already, as he was sitting on one of the benches and grumbling about a squeaky joint in his left arm.

“Are you okay?”

Gears looked up, perplexed, but it wasn’t clear if he was confused by the question itself or the fact that it was Cliffjumper asking it.

“Yeh,” he said at last, dispensing something into the energon cube sitting beside him. “I’m fine.”

Cliffjumper frowned slightly, pretending not to notice that Gears’ additive was a circuit soother.

—

Cliffjumper keeps his helm lowered. The main thing occupying his sensory net at the moment is floor cleanser, but if he expands his EM field as far out as he can, he can sense other Cybertronians around the room. If only he had reassurance to give them; he can feel their fear through their fields and it’s infectious.

He’s trembling with adrenaline, but he won’t dare to release it, not if it could get him and his fellow hostages killed. Beside him, Gears has half of his face pressed into the floor, but his optics are moving nonstop, watching the thieves forage through the credit vault.

Somewhere in the room is someone whimpering and one of the thieves certainly doesn’t like that. He growls in everyone’s general direction to keep quiet and it has exactly the opposite effect. The whimpering turns into a mewl.

Since the attention isn’t on him at the moment, Cliffjumper glances up and shakes his helm violently at the guilty femme, who stares in distress back at him and continues. He enlarges his optics, pleading, mouthing the word _STOP_ over and over, but her mewl breaks into sobs and he knows she physically _can’t_ stop.

The guard over the prisoners lunges, heaving her up and shaking her, bellowing threats in her face which only terrify her further. Finally he throws her down, proclaiming that he’s going to make an example of what happens when bots don’t follow orders. He scans the other hostages with an vile snarl before striding toward his chosen prey, pulling him up, dragging him toward the center of the room where he can be seen by all, and promptly blasting him twice in the chest.

Gears slumps, energon pooling on the floor around him. He reaches for Cliff and then he’s gone.

—

Cliffjumper hissed a vulgar curse into the dark. It was 2:39, he just knew it.

 _Primus_ , he thought. _Primus, Primus, Primus. Fraggit all. This needs to stop!_

Rolling upright, he stretched an arm out, tugging on a foot poking out of a thermal tarp. After a four-klik delay, there was a reaction.

“Whadd’ya want?” The familiar voice was groggy but _alive_. Alive was all that mattered.

Cliffjumper swallowed, retracting his hand and burying his face in his pillow. He was reduced to prank-waking.

 _I’m going insane_.

He knew he was haunting Gears, but he couldn’t stop. His optics followed his pace-mate whenever he walked by in the energon stockroom. He would glance at him from across the table while they were fueling up for the day and then follow at a safe distance to see if he was assigned to a mission roster so he could volunteer too.

Gears was also aware of the stalking; he caught Cliffjumper’s gaze more than once in their little game of photovoltaic-cat-and-glitch-mouse. Usually he rolled his optics or glared, but sometimes he would lift his gaze to the ceiling as though asking Primus for strength. In the meantime he was using more circuit soothers and Cliffjumper wondered if he was giving Gears what the humans called ‘indigestion’. He almost hoped so; it served Gears right for being inconsiderate enough to keep dying so appallingly.

 _But it’s just dreams_ , he reminded himself, feeling less and less sure with each night that passed in the same horrible fashion.

In a way, it was Gears haunting Cliffjumper, not the other way around.

—

The airlocks have been breached; the Reapers are overwhelming the Culumexian ship _Rubiplas_.

The security detail reacted as soon as they heard the dull thud on the outside of the ship, but this is the _Reapers_ they’re fighting. As powerful as a Culumexian strike force is, these warriors are known for causing hideous and total destruction.

As they set about their work killing the crew, the Reapers converse in a language none of the Minibots can understand. They already smell like burnt metal and energon, though Cliffjumper suspects it might be so strong because of whatever vessels they’ve already stormed and annihilated today.

Some of the besieged refuse to be taken like docile turbo-puppies. They step forward in a vain attempt to protect their friends, their pace-mates, and despite all doubts Cliffjumper has ever had about him, despite dirty thoughts he’s suppressed about his self-preservation and hypochondria, Gears is one of the brave.

Cliffjumper can only watch as Gears is surrounded and forced, kicking and screaming, against a bulkhead. One of the Reapers has talons which he sinks into Gears’ chest with deadly efficiency. The others holding him still release their grip and yet Gears doesn’t even cry out as he _hangs_ from the claws. He presses against the wall in a vain attempt to extract them from him. The Reaper obliges, heaving them out and drawing a gush of energon. Gears slides down the wall, staring up at his killer. His lips move but there’s no sound as the life fades from his gaze.

A chronometer is set in the wall a few feet away. Cliffjumper observes as it strikes a new minute.

14:39.

—

Cliffjumper opened his optics.

His spark and processor were both roiling and he was shivering from both fear and cold, which meant his thermal tarp was likely across the room.

 _Reapers_ , he agonized. _Primus help me, I’m having dreams about fraggin’_ Reapers _now and I’ve never even seen them! How did I reach this point?_

He didn’t have to look at the chronometer to know what time it was.

_This stops now. Today._

“Where’s Gears?”

Windcharger glanced up briefly and then returned his attention to the data pad he was reading.

“You just missed him; he was heading for the public wash-racks, I think. Though I’m surprised you weren’t following him so you’d already know that.”

That remark made Cliffjumper just a bit self-conscious but he shoved it away and sped off in the direction of the wash-racks.

Feeling only a little bit guilty about the invasion of privacy, Cliffjumper stuck his helm in the one wash-rack that was running and was greeted by an emphatic swat to the face.

“I’m a little busy now, Cliffjumper!” Gears shouted over the water.

“Too busy to see me?” Cliff demanded.

Groaning loudly, Gears shut off the water generators and stomped out, barely taking care not to slip as he seized his tarp from nearby and dried himself off. He wasn’t really paying attention to Cliff, so the red Porsche took the opportunity to study him.

Gears looked tired; his face was drawn and his plating was tamped tightly down over his protoform. Unusual for Gears, who had made it clear countless times that he liked to keep himself in peak condition. Tossing aside the tarp, Gears sat on a nearby bench and cracked open another circuit soother from his container, which he simply dry-swallowed due to the lack of handy energon.

“What’s so important that you had to stick your nose in my rack?” he asked irritably.

How was he going to explain without sounding like a complete half-clock? “I…was just wondering where the circuit soothers were,” Cliffjumper answered dumbly after a pause.

Rattling the container, Gears snarked, “Well, you know now.”

“Your intake valve giving you trouble?” Cliff asked innocently.

“Don’t tease,” Gears ordered, wincing a little as he placed his chin in one hand. “You said you were looking for them, so don’t tell me you don’t suffer the same.”

Cliffjumper shrugged, folding his arms and shooting back, “Actually I was just wanting to take inventory for the pace. Y’know, official—” He froze abruptly, optics fastening onto the chronometer mounted in the wall over Gears’ shoulder.

2:31.

“What, CJ?” Gears tried to recapture his attention.

“Oh. Oh, _scrap_ ,” Cliffjumper breathed. “They were all in your chest—the vibroblade, the acid pellets, even the claws.”

Gears blinked. “My…what? What claws?”

2:33.

“I think you’re going to have a spark flux,” Cliffjumper burst out. Gears’ optics scrunched up doubtfully at the mention of the glitch notorious in their people.

“I have enough issues as it is, Cliff; don’t you think I’d know?”

Bending down, Cliffjumper leaned in so their faces were inches apart.

“Sure, but then you might start doubting yourself, wondering if it’s actually real or just something you’re imagining like everyone tells you.”

“ _You’ve_ told me that before,” Gears countered, leaning back to try recovering his personal space. “And because of that, it’s a good thing I’m not—” He cut off his own sentence, releasing a pained hiss and cradling his left arm.

“I feel dizzy,” he muttered apprehensively.

2:36.

Cliffjumper seized him before he could topple off the bench, laying him across it instead and jamming a finger into his audial.

“Ratchet, it’s Cliffjumper, come to the wash-racks ASAP! Gears’ spark is fluxing! He needs a crash kit _now!_ ”

Gears gulped, shuttering his optics tightly as his chest plating clamped in on itself and his EM field quivered. “You—you think Huffer’s the dramatic one?” he rasped.

“Shut up!” Cliffjumper barked. “The Reapers aren’t getting you this time.”

“Reapers…? What’re you—” Gears made a low noise in his throat and Cliffjumper clutched his closest shoulder, mouth opening when his processor finally made the last connection:

The runes in his dream…they were the ones used in the ancient days as funeral rites.

2:39.

A heavy hand fell onto his shoulder and brought him out of his daze.

“So…Ratchet caught it in time,” Brawn sighed. “Rather, _you_ did.” Brawn’s fingertips dug slightly into the seam of Cliffjumper’s shoulder plating as he squeezed. “Cliff…yesterday, by doing what you did, you kept our pace whole.”

“I don’t want a reward for it, in case you were planning something,” Cliffjumper replied, his tone flat and lacking his usual bite. He shifted a little in the unforgiving chair. His aft was already killing him but he was unwilling to move.

Brawn didn’t respond, so Cliff glanced up at him and saw something softer even than relief. Brawn had suffered a flux once, when he was still with his first pace, the red Minibot recalled suddenly, lifting his own hand and momentarily squeezing his leader’s.

“You should recharge or at least get a cube,” Brawn commented, removing his hand and folding his arms over his chest, optics locked on the medical berth’s occupant. Gears was recharging, oblivious to them both. “I can watch him.”

“I want to,” Cliffjumper stated without hesitation, shifting again. There was another pause and then a pillow flopped into his lap. Catching it, Cliff gratefully slid it onto the seat underneath him.

“I’ll get you and Gears both a cube and then come back,” Brawn told him, heading for the door. Cliffjumper had a sudden thought, twisting to look at his back.

“Brawn, what time is it?”

Brawn paused for a nanoklik, holding up a hand as he checked. “…2:38.”

He’d barely taken another step before Cliff burst out, “ _Wait_ , Brawn.”

Indulgently the pace-leader turned, spreading his arms out questioningly. “What is it?”

Cliffjumper didn’t explain, too busy tracking each klik that passed. 2:39. Exactly a day since he’d saved Gears’ life. 2:39, and nothing happened. All was very quiet, aside from the spark monitor informing him that the patient was still very much alive.

“Alright,” Cliffjumper relented. “Sorry.” To his credit, Brawn didn’t press the matter, smiling resignedly and heading out to retrieve the good stuff for his mates.


End file.
